Did i get that right: The string theory states that the Matter in our universe, protons, neutrons, electrons, consists 11 dimensional swinging strings.
What exactly is energy, and do the strings have a connection to space time?

Did i get that right: The string theory states that the Matter in our universe, protons, neutrons, electrons, consists 11 dimensional swinging strings.
What exactly is energy, and do the strings have a connection to space time?

That’s kind of it, but don’t get too caught up in the notion of little strings. That’s just a nice visualization for a very complex mathematical model. It’s not like there are actually little pieces of stuff that if you could be small enough you’d see tiny pieces of shoelace or something wiggling around.

edit:put the same question in another forum, they told me i shouldnt get to exited about the string theory because it is more mathematk-esoteric stuff than something you could test properly.
I think i should get a good book about that.

The question session was unusually sceptical and challenging, beginning with a very hostile and long-winded question about whether he wasn’t worried that he had led physics down a 30-year path of failure. Unfortunately the questioner was intent on making a hostile speech, and much time was wasted trying to get him to shut up so that Witten could address the question.

Here is the question of Alexander Unzicker (who wrote a few critical books about developments in modern theoretical physics (alas for most of you in German…)):

This was an impressive talk. I am sure many people are impressed. I am also sure that with your work you are making the best out of your extraordinary capabilities.

I am not quite sure however that you are fully aware of the responsibility towards science, the search for the laws of nature…. It was Isaac Newton who said Nature created everything by number, weight and measure. Thus it is the theorist’s business to predict numbers the experimentalist’s business to measure these numbers. And as everybody can see supersymmetry and string theory in the past thirty years did not deliver a single result which Isaac Newton had called physics.

So, aren’t you afraid of being the scientific leader of an entire epoch of physics that might lead to nowhere? Aren’t you afraid of misguiding the concentrated intelligence of seven billion people on a planet? (chairman tries to interrupt)

Of course, nobody can prove you wrong, but it’s the history of science which gives a clear indication: the real revolutions of physics have always been pushed forward by sceptic individuals, never by the euphoria of the many. And this is where your problem lies.

Your risk is that you are playing mathematical games of with their link to reality is still a promise, concepts of which the link to the physical reality you do not understand. Thus I’d like to urge you to reflect upon your role in science. Please, get back to reality.

I do not quite agree, but grosso modo I do.

Signature

GdB

When the word ‘truth’ is uttered a shadow of violence is cast as well.

edit:put the same question in another forum, they told me i shouldnt get to exited about the string theory because it is more mathematk-esoteric stuff than something you could test properly.
I think i should get a good book about that

You might want to try Steven Hawking’s “The Grand Design” for starters. He and his co-author lay it out for us scientifically challenged folks. It’s out in a PDF now too.

The question session was unusually sceptical and challenging, beginning with a very hostile and long-winded question about whether he wasn’t worried that he had led physics down a 30-year path of failure. Unfortunately the questioner was intent on making a hostile speech, and much time was wasted trying to get him to shut up so that Witten could address the question.

Here is the question of Alexander Unzicker (who wrote a few critical books about developments in modern theoretical physics (alas for most of you in German…)):

This was an impressive talk. I am sure many people are impressed. I am also sure that with your work you are making the best out of your extraordinary capabilities.

I am not quite sure however that you are fully aware of the responsibility towards science, the search for the laws of nature…. It was Isaac Newton who said Nature created everything by number, weight and measure. Thus it is the theorist’s business to predict numbers the experimentalist’s business to measure these numbers. And as everybody can see supersymmetry and string theory in the past thirty years did not deliver a single result which Isaac Newton had called physics.

So, aren’t you afraid of being the scientific leader of an entire epoch of physics that might lead to nowhere? Aren’t you afraid of misguiding the concentrated intelligence of seven billion people on a planet? (chairman tries to interrupt)

Of course, nobody can prove you wrong, but it’s the history of science which gives a clear indication: the real revolutions of physics have always been pushed forward by sceptic individuals, never by the euphoria of the many. And this is where your problem lies.

Your risk is that you are playing mathematical games of with their link to reality is still a promise, concepts of which the link to the physical reality you do not understand. Thus I’d like to urge you to reflect upon your role in science. Please, get back to reality.

I do not quite agree, but grosso modo I do.

Very interesting ideas. Although I’m not qualified to speak intelligently on the specifics of any of this, I do get the impression that so much of modern physics is sort of a long journey down a wrong path. Like somewhere someone lost the connection between math and the real world, and started a whole self-referencing world of equations and so on. I think the first time I felt this was when I was learning about the wave equation and how it collapses to provide physical reality (something like that). It always sounded like the physicists and mathematicians we’re talking of it as if it was an actual real thing.

Ed Witten is a mathematical genius. AFAIK he’s one of the only non mathematicians to win the Field’s Medal, the Nobel of math. He and the rest of them may all be on the wrong path, but far be it for amateurs such as ourselves to assume to know what the heck is going on there.

Very interesting ideas. Although I’m not qualified to speak intelligently on the specifics of any of this, I do get the impression that so much of modern physics is sort of a long journey down a wrong path. Like somewhere someone lost the connection between math and the real world, and started a whole self-referencing world of equations and so on. I think the first time I felt this was when I was learning about the wave equation and how it collapses to provide physical reality (something like that). It always sounded like the physicists and mathematicians we’re talking of it as if it was an actual real thing.

String theory does not even come close to being all of modern physics. The whole point of testability is to show that the models which physicists figure out are accurate, and modern physics still follows this rule just as physics did 200 years ago. Physicists and mathematicians do talk about their craft as if it were an actual, real thing because literally they deal with actual, real models.

AFAIK he’s one of the only non mathematicians to win the Field’s Medal, the Nobel of math.

Given this fact, and that no testable prediction follows from string theory, I think this is exactly the critique of Unzicker: Witten is a great mathematician.

Compare with Einstein: he also had to invent new mathematics (tensor calculus) for his general theory of relativity. But he explained a physical fact with it that was not yet understood (Mercury’s perihelion precession), plus a few empirical predictions (e.g. bending of light). Einstein worked together with David Hilbert to work out the mathematical problems, and so they both found the solutions nearly at the same time.

Signature

GdB

When the word ‘truth’ is uttered a shadow of violence is cast as well.